[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 147 (Thursday, November 14, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1995-E1996]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WORLD POPULATION GROWTH

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 13, 2002

  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to submit a recent 
speech delivered by the President of the Population Institute, Mr. 
Werner Fornos, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, 
Virginia on October 1, 2002. Mr. Fornos spoke to the rapidly growing 
economic and environmental pressures created by our burgeoning world 
population, especially in third world countries. These concerns 
represent a pressing issue for congressional debate and I offer these 
remarks to that end.

Remarks by Werner Fornos, President of the Population Institute, at the 
    Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA. October 1, 2002

       World population stands today at more than 6.2 billion and 
     increases by more than 75 million each year. An incredible 97 
     per cent of this growth occurs in the developing world, by 
     definition the poorest countries of the world--those where 
     for far too many daily living is a struggle for mere 
     survival. These are the very countries least able to afford 
     such massive influxes of people, countries where demographic 
     pressures already place unbelievable burdens on schools, 
     hospitals, transportation and virtually all facets of the 
     economic and social infrastructure.
       Yet our soaring human numbers are projected to exceed 9 
     billion by the year 2050. While the wealthiest countries on 
     our planet are estimated to account for only 52 million of 
     this increase, the developing world is expected to account 
     for 2.7 billion.
       But world population does not need to continue to grow at 
     this dizzying pace.
       First though, I must tell you that no matter what 
     corrective course we may steer, the earth's population will 
     reach 8 billion. The reason is our built-in demographic 
     momentum: there are one billion people today between the ages 
     of 15 and 24, the largest number of people entering their 
     reproductive years at the same time than at any other time in 
     the history of the world.

[[Page E1996]]

       How can we hold the number of people on earth down to 
     approximately 8 billion? The answer to that question lies 
     with providing access to voluntary family planning for the 
     more than 300 million couples in the world who today want to 
     make their own decisions about when and if they will have 
     children--couples who in many cases did not want their last 
     child and do not want another.
       Accommodating these couples, however, is another matter 
     that has been complicated by the anti-abortion movement. Let 
     me say here that the Population Institute is passionately 
     dedicated to providing access to family planning information, 
     means and services; we do not consider abortion to be a 
     method of family planning. As a matter of fact, abortion is a 
     procedure to which many women resort who lack access to 
     family planning.
       However, a sizable contingent of those who have the 
     audacity to label themselves ``pro-life'' because they oppose 
     abortion have become perhaps the single greatest obstacle to 
     those 300 million-plus women obtaining family planning.
       If you want to prevent abortion, the first line of defense 
     is preventing pregnancy. And that is what family planning is 
     about: preventing pregnancies, not terminating them.
       And if the Bush administration is serious about being 
     ``prolife,'' it should be promoting family planning--not 
     signing executive orders that cut off the congressionally 
     approved $34 million United States contribution to the United 
     Nations Population Fund, the largest multilateral provider of 
     international population assistance, as the President has.
       But the obstacles to universal access to family planning 
     are not solely within the anti-abortion movement. Population 
     policy today is a matter of failure, ignorance, and timidity.
       Last month I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, attending 
     the World Summit on Sustainable Development--the most 
     important global meeting on environment and development since 
     the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Oddly, population 
     growth had no place on the official agenda. But there can be 
     no doubt that population and sustainable development are 
     inexorably linked.
       After all, we live in a world where 70 percent of all 
     families are dependent on firewood as their primary source of 
     heating and cooking fuel. A world where 600,000 square miles 
     of forest have been cut down worldwide, just over the past 10 
     years. A world where forestland equivalent to three times the 
     size of Belgium is annually cut down in the Congo Basin 
     alone.
       Though there were some achievements at the Johannesburg 
     summit, it was seriously flawed by the neglect to link human 
     growth with environmental well being in the face of economic 
     growth.
       The Johannesburg summit succeeded in establishing clearly 
     important time-tables for pressing matters, such as: halving 
     the number of people living in poverty who lack access to 
     clean water and adequate sanitation by 2015; restoring 
     depleted fish stocks by 2015; and significantly reducing the 
     extinction rate of the world's plant and animal life by 2010.
       I seriously question, however, how any one of these 
     obviously significant and desirable targets can be reached 
     until we, first and foremost, establish a crystal clear 
     accelerated target for providing voluntary family planning 
     and reproductive health care to those more than 300 million 
     who need and want fewer children but lack the information, 
     education and the affordable means to control their own 
     fertility. The Johannesburg summit was not a failure; I 
     believe that so long as nations of the world continue to 
     discuss relevant issues at very least it achieves the 
     opportunity for mutual understanding and mutual respect. But 
     I also believe that much more could have been accomplished 
     had the meeting not been bogged down in coddling the 
     comfortable and ignoring the afflicted.
       Considering the political climate, especially in the United 
     States, at the time of the WSSD, many feel that population 
     stabilization advocates should count themselves fortunate 
     that the summit reaffirmed the 1994 International Conference 
     on Population and Development (ICPD) Plan of Action, as well 
     as the results of the 1999 ICPD+5 meeting and the Millennium 
     Development Goals--all of which had important population 
     policy and program recommendations. In hindsight, this 
     appears to be true enough. Yet while reaffirmations are not 
     insignificant, in my view summit meetings should be about 
     more than acknowledgments of what already has been approved. 
     They should focus on progress: developing new strategies to 
     attain established goals and objectives, where they are 
     needed, and accelerating efforts to reach these goals and 
     objectives, where it is applicable. It is in these areas 
     where, as far as world population issues arc concerned, the 
     WSSD was disappointing.
       In addition to squandering an opportunity to accelerate 
     progress on universal access to family planning, the 
     Johannesburg summit failed to establish a target for vastly 
     reducing the carbon emissions responsible for global warming 
     and increasing reliance on renewable energy sources such as 
     solar and wind power.
       We know that the planet in many respects has an impressive 
     capacity for resilience. Some years back British scientists 
     reported that the ozone layer--the protective shield that 
     prevents ultra-violet B rays from devastating the earth with 
     skin cancer--was thinning in the southern hemisphere and had 
     virtually disappeared over Antarctica, the world. For years, 
     industries producing chlorofluorocarbons influenced 
     industrialized countries responsible for most of the 
     emissions to forego becoming involved in an effort to prevent 
     such emissions. But with new and compelling scientific 
     evidence before the world, nations hastened to approve the 
     Montreal Protocol, phasing out CFCs and other ozone-depleting 
     chemicals by 1996. Within recent weeks, it has been reported 
     that the shield is thickening at a pace that might close the 
     10,000 square mile hole in the layer over Antarctica within 
     50 years.
       I am convinced we can have similar success in overall 
     sustainable development, if we have the foresight and the 
     courage to establish rational and effective timetables. The 
     timetable for reducing world population growth to a figure 
     closer to 8 billion rather than 9 billion would specifying 
     dates for:
       Widening women's educational opportunities--at all levels, 
     primary, secondary and higher education. In country after 
     country studies, show that the more education a woman has the 
     more likely she is to have only the number of children she 
     can nurture and educate;
       Increasing employment opportunities for women. Studies also 
     show that when women have income-generating employment, they 
     are likely to have fewer children;
       Reduction of infant and child mortality. A major factor 
     contributing to larger family size in many developing 
     countries is that infant and child survival is precarious at 
     best. Couples frequently have six, seven or eight children in 
     the hope that one, two, or three will survive. With adequate 
     prenatal and postnatal care, infant and child mortality can 
     be vastly reduced.
       Universal access to family planning information, education, 
     and the affordable means to practice it.
       Some years back, World Bank President Robert McNamara said 
     in a celebrated speech at Notre Dame University that time 
     lost in the effort to reduce rampant population growth can 
     never be recovered. I believe that rapid population growth is 
     a problem the entire world must address. Failure to do so 
     would be the ultimate global blunder, one from which there is 
     no recovery.

     

                          ____________________